Structured data and social previews
How to add structured data for rich results
Structured data is the markup behind the rich results you see in Google: the star ratings, the prices, the FAQ drop-downs. A result with one of those takes up more room and pulls more clicks than two plain lines of text.
What it is
Why it costs you
How to fix it
Add JSON-LD for the type that matches the page.
- WordPress: Yoast and Rank Math output baseline schema (Article, Breadcrumb, Organization) automatically; for products or FAQs, a plugin like Schema Pro or the block-level FAQ block adds the rest.
- Shopify: good themes include Product and Offer schema already. Check your result in the Rich Results Test. If it is thin, add the missing JSON-LD to the product template.
- Hand-coded: drop a
<script type="application/ld+json">block in the head using schema.org’s vocabulary. Start with Organization on the homepage and the type that fits each template (Article, Product, LocalBusiness, FAQPage).
How to check your site
Paste a URL into Google’s Rich Results Test. It shows what structured data Google found and whether the page is eligible for a rich result. Search Console reports valid and broken items across the site.
What this looks like in practice
A recipe blog added Recipe schema (cook time, rating, image). Its results started showing the cook-time and star rating, and click-through on those pages climbed without any change in position.
Questions people ask
- Does structured data improve ranking?
- Not directly. It makes you eligible for rich results, which raise click-through, an indirect but real gain.
- What if I add markup and no rich result appears?
- Eligibility is not a guarantee; Google decides when to show one. Make sure the markup is valid and matches visible content, then give it time.
Does your site have this?
Check your site to see which pages could show a richer result.
See also
- How to add Open Graph tags for link previewsThese pages have no Open Graph tags, so when somebody shares the link on Slack, LinkedIn, or WhatsApp, the preview is blank or scraped at random. It does not affect ranking; it affects whether anybody clicks a shared link.
- How to fix title tag problemsThe title tag is the line people read in search results, and the strongest single signal on the page about what it is for. Four things go wrong with it, and a site with one of them usually has two. Each is below, with what it costs and how to put it right.
- How to fix meta description problemsThe meta description is the sentence under your link in search results. It is not a ranking factor, which is exactly why it gets neglected — and it is what decides whether anybody clicks the result you worked to earn. Three faults account for almost all of it.
- How to fix H1 heading problemsThe H1 is the visible heading that tells a reader — and a search engine — what a page is about before either goes any further. Three faults are common, and a template is behind most of them, which means one fix usually clears the whole site.